What does the Meizu Rockbox project need?

Err0r · 04-03-2008

I'm sure that there are many people wanting to help out with this project. Some more technical, some less. I'm curious to know what people can do to accelerate and help this project.

For instance, I've been thinking of chipping in some money and also set up a donation fund for this project, but what will the money be used for?

I hope this thread can prove to be helpful for the Meizu Rockbox project.

markun · 04-03-2008

You could also donate some money to the rockbox fund. It will be used to bring developers together (there will be a european and american devcon this summer) and to buy new players for devs.

More and more rockbox devs are buying meizu's now (all 8GB M6SL so far), so when they all arrive the port will get some more attention.

A lot of work that has gone into rockbox was not target specific but benefits all players, including the meizu models in future, that's why I personally think it would be a bit unfair to set up a meizu port specific fund, but you are free to do so of course.

btw, I added a todo to the rockbox wiki so people can track the status of the various parts of the port and see who's working on what:

MeizuM6Port < Main < TWiki

EDIT: this is a nice summary of what people can do to help rockbox in general if they are not programmers:

daniel.haxx.se What Can I do for Rockbox when not Programming?

Err0r · 04-03-2008

It's impossible for all developers interested in Meizu products to receive a free player. Who decides which developers get the players?

I can see why you feel it is a bit selfish to donate only for the Meizu-specific port, but most people want to donate for their player to be Rockbox supported. Many players, such as the iPod, have huge fanbases. If a Meizu fan donates, it won't really help them as much...

markun · 04-03-2008

Are you suggesting we should stop using ipod user money to pay for meizu players? Who do you think payed for my M6?

kalel90 · 04-04-2008

No hes saying the m6 has a smaller fanbase and us giving to the overall project wouldn't do as much good to accelerate the progress rate on the m6 as a m6 specific fund would.
As in the money would go towards other players there by eleminating the point of speeding up work on the m6.

bagder · 04-04-2008

If you say you're "better" than being in the huge Rockbox family with all the other targets, why would the main Rockbox donation fund help out the Rockbox-on-Meizu project then? That money was donated by users of all sorts of targets.

Besides, the fact that the main fund is funded by users using something like 30 different players make it bigger and it funds Rockbox as a single project as that's what Rockbox is.

Rockbox-on-Meizu is a sub-project to get drivers and tweaks fixed to make it run on the Meizu models, by donating and throwing money only to the guys that work on these drivers you're purposely ignoring the vast amount of time and effort spent by hundreds of individuals to make Rockbox what it is. And all that sweat will come to the Meizu ones the drivers and tweaks are working.

Of course the hackers that work hard on getting Meizu support for Rockbox done are worth admiration, support and even perhaps funding if there's anything particular they need to reach results faster.

If you say that only the drivers and tweaks for Meizu are worth your donations, then I would accuse you of not understanding exactly what it means to create a project with 500,000 lines of quality code.

You're of course free to do whatever you want, but me being one of the Rockbox guys who've ordered a Meizu to get into this work I feel I must protest since I really don't like this kind of attitude. And if you decide to proceed with a Meizu-specific funding, I would like to you be clear and accurate in your description when you do this - that it isn't going to the "normal" Rockbox project.

jbernardo · 04-04-2008

I wouldn´t donate on a meizu only project. Rockbox is the sum of its parts, and donating to the whole project is the way to get a better firmware to our specific device. Trying to restrict the donations to "meizu only development" will only alienate the developers.

Llorean · 04-04-2008

I think there may be some slight misunderstanding here too.

Rockbox is, essentially (when boiled down A LOT) two parts: the Application, and the Device Drivers.

Now, the part that receives the most work for a port is the Device Drivers. This is the stuff that is hardware specific (for the most part). The part that receives the most work, over all, is the application. The application is where all the codecs and functionality are. The bits you actually *want*. The application is worked on developers with any of a number of players, and when a feature gets added to it, it more or less is ready to be used on any of the other players Rockbox runs on.

So, while the idea of an M6-specific fund may sound good, there's already a decent amount of interest in the player. Money is somewhat unlikely to make a developer interested in your player. But if the money goes to the project as a whole, if a dev IS interested in your player, it might help him acquire it. Meanwhile, if a dev ISN'T interested in your player, but has another player that has just failed, it might also be used to replace that player, and fuel development toward a feature that will still come to your player anyway. It basically allows a much more flexible use of that money for funding overall development. In this way you get the maximum advantage out of the money, rather than potentially wasting it on trying to buy M6s for unknown quantities, or even simply donating them to well known developers who just aren't that interested.

kgb2008 · 04-04-2008

As i known, all rockbox ports share the same codebase, we should not tear it off. Since we have gathered enough information to support the feasibility of this project, I believe all we need is just manhours for coding and debuging, The encourage from meizu's fans helps, but don't push them too much, just keep the developers cheering up and out of stress.

sere83 · 04-04-2008

can someone please educate me. I don't really understand what rock box would bring to the M6? On something like an ipod fair enough but why the M6?. Although I am not that familiar with all the capabilities of rockbox it appears that the interfaces look very ugly and it often means a decline in battery life. I'm finding it difficult to understand what it could improve on the M6. The only real problem the M6 has is stuttering. It already supports many file formats and can be themed. In terms of video the 20fps limit is a hardware restriction so could not be helped with rockbox. What else would rockbox really bring?